Malacky first appear in writing in 1206, when noblemen were granted a stretch of land that the document calls Malucha. That is a fact about a charter, not about when people arrived — the road had been in use for a thousand years already. The land lay in the frontier belt of the Kingdom of Hungary, in the region Slovaks call Záhorie, "beyond the hills", because from Bratislava or Trnava you had to cross the Little Carpathians to reach it. Frontier country meant few people, a great deal of forest, and a king who cared mainly about who was guarding the way in from Moravia.Malacky sa prvý raz spomínajú v listine z roku 1206, keď šľachtici dostali kus zeme, ktorý sa v nej nazýva Malucha. Je to údaj o listine, nie o tom, odkedy tu žijú ľudia — po ceste sa chodilo už tisíc rokov predtým. Kraj patril do pohraničného pásma Uhorského kráľovstva a volá sa Záhorie, teda „za horami“: z Bratislavy či Trnavy sa sem muselo cez Malé Karpaty. Pohraničie znamenalo málo ľudí, veľa lesa a kráľa, ktorého zaujímalo najmä to, kto stráži cestu z Moravy.
